Over the last several years there has been tremendous growth of the Internet. This growth has been spurred by end user quests for data, information and products. In order to support this growth, there is a multiplicity of web sites scattered around the world and executing on a variety of software and hardware platforms. From time to time and for any one of a variety of reasons, there sometimes exists a need to migrate from one platform to another. For example, some web sites are hosted on an Apache web server running the Linux operating system, others are hosted on a Netscape enterprise network server running in a Windows environment and still other web sites operate on the Internet Information Server (IIS) on a Microsoft Window's network platform. It should be noted that these web server platforms are merely exemplary and are specified only to aid in the explanation of the present invention. When dealing with this variety of platforms, it may become necessary to migrate from one to another, as previously mentioned. There is therefore a need to provide an administrative tool to facilitate such migration.
One example of such a tool was the IIS migration wizard provided by Microsoft. This prior art system was provided to migrate from Netscape enterprise network server and Apache server to IIS version 5.0. Another objective of this prior art migration wizard was to facilitate an upgrade path within the IIS version of products. However, this tool along with other similar tools were problematic in that they attempted to do too much, were not intuitive and were not directed at the right type of administrator. For instance, the IIS migration wizard was a graphical user interface (GUI) based tool rather than a script or command line tool. While ordinarily this would not be perceived as a problem, it should be understood that the purpose of the tool was to enable an administrator who typically worked with command lines and scripts, to perform a migration of their existing server. Thus the intended user was faced with an unfamiliar interface. More importantly, the intended users are confronted with what they would consider to be a tool that limited their ability to customize the tool as needed. Beyond the problems discussed thus far, these prior art migration tools did not work. The tools tried to do way too much. The tools that were available to perform migration within a particular operating system platform such as Linux or Unix, could not be used to migrate web servers onto the Window's operating system platform.
What is needed is a migration tool that addresses the main features sought by administrators. First, the migration tool had to be in a language that administrators can relate to. For example, rather that providing an administrator with an executable black box file, a script file utilizing a language such as Perl either alone or in combination with some other scripting language would be preferable. Second, the migration tool must work when delivered. In other words, the migration tool has to be one that provides functionality without requiring too much effort from the administrator. Third, the migration tool must handle some basic migration tasks. Such tasks include the migration of server configuration, content of web sites and the migration of MIME types. And fourth, the migration tool should provide new key and innovative features. Such features include the ability to invoke the tool from any one of a variety of machines. The tool should be accessible from the source or target operating platform or from other intermediate systems. Intermediate machines are referred to as hosters. For example, the tool should operate on a computing device utilizing either Linux Windows. Even further, this tool should be capable of being invoked from either a source server computing device such as a server running Apache Linux or a destination server computing device such as a computer running Windows IIS. Another feature of such a tool, would be the migration of server extensions, such as for example Front Page Server Extensions (FPSE). Yet another feature would be the migration of user directories e.g. “www.mysite/˜myname/*.htm” (a user's special directory). An even further feature would be the migration of .htaccess files. These files contain directory and file permission levels. These and other features are provided by the system and method of the present invention and will be discussed later in this document.